In comparison with common swallowable soft capsules in industries of food or pharmaceutics, chewable soft capsules (chewing type soft capsules) have improved chewiness of capsule shell so that they can be bitten and chewed in mouth, and have no poor taste of contents in common soft capsules.
At present, some chewable soft capsules and methods for preparing the same have been reported. For example, The patent application CN101590027A discloses a chewable soft capsule and a method for making the same, in which a sweetener layer is formed at the outside of soft capsule shell by crystallization so that the sweetener layer felt by mouth hides the taste of raw materials of capsule shell during administration. The patent application US20050136104 discloses a chewable soft capsule, in which a relatively high water content is maintained to provide the capsule with a certain softness, in which the water content of capsule shell is up to 27%. Chinese patent ZL200480021784.0 discloses a chewable capsule and a method for making the same, in which a part of crystal precipitating agent is exposed on the surface of shell as a crystal to enhance the cooling feeling in eating and to reduce the adhesion between capsules. In addition, some soft capsule products in market have an increased plasticizer proportion to get softer capsule shell.
Although the above soft capsules in the prior art have solved some problems, still there are many aspects to be further improved: (1) the chewiness of capsule shell is unsatisfactory and the stability is poor. Although the softness and chewiness of capsule shell can be improved by increasing plasticizer content or maintaining a relatively high water content, like those in US20050136104, soft capsules may be out of shape or adhered because of extrusion between each other thereby shortened the shelf-life thereof; (2) common soft capsules are not chewable after cracking, and in order to avoid reaction between liquid hydrophilic substance and capsule skin, the content is usually a liquid or suspended oil phase or filed with drug, while the poor odor of drug and greasy taste of oil and fat render the capsule can hardly be swallowed.
Filled jelly sweets are favorite products for many consumers. At present, filled jelly sweets (sandwich type gel sweets) are prepared by a process (for example, as shown in FIG. 1) shown as follows: (1) swelling gelatin with water, then heating to dissolve gelatin to form a gelatin solution which is maintained at 60-65° C. for standby use; (2) heating white granulated sugar, glucose syrup and water for dissolution, then boiling to reach a certain sugar degree, mixing with the gelatin solution (adjusting acidity, color and taste), casting and adding contents.
However, the existing production processes are complicated, and during the process, the sweet shell should have a thickness sufficient for uniformly encapsulating the contents, and the sweet body casting temperature determines and limits the material properties of the contents and the proportion of filled content, otherwise, series problems such as syrup explosion, decentration, leakage may occur, so that the fill should be hydrophilic materials, and the content of the fill of the product would be merely 8-15%. Since the thickness of the shell of filled jelly sweet is usually far greater than 2 mm, the mouth feel of product is also limited. In addition, due to the limitations of device, process conditions on the fill system, the taste can be modified merely by regulating flavors so that the filled products are lack of innovation.